


The Tip of the Tongue, The Teeth, The Lips

by SilverEclipse119



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: A little bit of blood, Cat, Gen, Kidnapping, There's a cat at one point, the ocs are all side characters though, they don't even have names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26023408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverEclipse119/pseuds/SilverEclipse119
Summary: Sometimes Gladstone finds himself in dangerous predicaments, despite his luck. Thankfully, his captors always seem to forget oneveryimportant detail about his biology.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	The Tip of the Tongue, The Teeth, The Lips

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:**
> 
>   * Kidnapping
>   * A little bit of blood mentioned
> 

> 
> Let me know if you think I missed a warning. I wanted to get this one out before the next episodes. Hope you enjoy!

Gladstone turned at the painful sound of a jaw hitting the wooden deck. Sprawled across the dark wood behind him was a large dog: tan fur, with floppy ears and long jowls. Some kind of a great dane, he supposed.

The dog _looked_ rather refined. He was dressed in a deceivingly decent three-piece suit: burgundy red, probably made from polyester. Cheap, but made to look expensive. 

Gladstone didn’t make any move to help him up. That bit of instinctual politeness had been squashed within him long, _long_ ago. He had learned the hard way one too many times; people around him _rarely_ trip for no reason.

The dog had drawn the attention of a few of Gladstone’s fellow passengers now. They had already shaken off their startlement at the loud noise and had finished processing the situation enough to help him back up. One of them, an older pig in a gaudy blue dress, shot Gladstone a dirty look as she cooed over the dog.

She did not say ‘Stop standing there with your beak hanging open and help this poor fellow up, you degenerate!’ out loud, although the ice in her eyes said it for her. 

“You poor dear, are you alright?” Is what she did say. To the dog of course. Not Gladstone.

“Oh, I’m quite alright!” the dog assured her, grinning modestly, a feat accomplished more with his eyes than mouth due to the length of his jowls.

Gladstone’s eyes searched the dog for signs of ill intent. He spotted a thin slip of white fabric held tightly in the dog’s balled fist, the only part of him that didn’t look jovial. The dog looked up at him, and followed his line of sight back to his own hand. He grinned innocently as he stuffed a handkerchief back into his breast pocket, notably _not_ using it to wipe off the sweat gathering on his brow.

Gladstone scowled back at the dog, his grinding teeth mostly hidden under his beak. 

The pig huffed at what she presumed was the simple rudeness of a spoiled young man. “No such thing as a young gentleman.” she tsked. 

Gladstone turned his back and strutted forward, stomping loudly in order to draw the attention of those around him. Even if most of them were staring with irritation, it was better to have that than no attention at all. He could handle irritation. Invisibility could be deadly for him right now.

It was rare for malicious planning to circumvent his luck, but it happened from time to time. He had a handful of scars to prove it, most of them mental, some of them literal _physical_ bite marks. The problem with being lucky all the time is that it becomes hard to tell what circumstances are due to his luck, and what circumstances are _too good to be true_.

It was starting to look like him winning that cruise ticket was the latter, _this time_ at least.

He marched up to the door of the bridge. One of the crew members was posted right outside: a chinstrap penguin in a sailor suit. It almost looked like Donald’s old one, though it seemed much more purposely nostalgically stylized in order to fit the old-timey theme of the cruise.

“How can I help you, sir?” He asked, his voice filled with adorable genuine gusto. Gladstone would have appreciated it more if his life wasn’t in danger.

“I’d like to speak to the captain,” he requested. “It’s urgent.”

If the penguin picked up on the shortness of his tone, he didn’t show it. “Of course! She said I could let people see her today. You’re lucky, you know. She’s in a particularly good mood. Usually she hates visitors.”

“You don’t say.” Gladstone muttered, tapping his foot impatiently.

The door creaked open, and the penguin escorted Gladstone inside. He told him to wait a moment while he asked the captain if she was available, then wandered back a sheepish second later to ask Gladstone for his name. A few minutes after that, he _finally_ came back with a second penguin. She was much taller than him, an emperor penguin clearly. The little chinstrap stood with her, like a tiny, excitable bodyguard.

Her uniform was modern and crisp, unlike the rest of the crews, most likely because she didn’t usually mingle with her ship’s guests. She ran her hand over her cap and smiled with a sort of terseness, as if she wasn’t all that used to interacting with strangers, but was willing to put in the effort today.

“Hello, Mister Gander. Are you here to ask about the iceberg?”

Gladstone almost stepped back, some of the imagery from a recent Titanic documentary playing through his mind. He shook those thoughts from his head. His luck wouldn’t put him on a doomed ship. A ship with someone who wanted to capture or kill him? Also unlikely, but still far more likely than the whole ship sinking.

“Iceberg?” He asked.

“Yes, the Auroras Iceberg. The one we’ll be passing later tonight. The Auroras Iceberg lights up like the northern lights every twenty five years, but every one hundred and fifty years the usually purple and blue lights turn red and green instead for unknown reasons. It’s a once in a lifetime experience. You’re truly lucky you’ll be able to see it.”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” Gladstone feigned enthusiasm. “ _Of course. A once in a lifetime opportunity. That's how that slimy crook slipped this one on me._ ” he grumbled internally.

Sometimes his luck had a bad habit of prioritising opportunities over his life. Sure, he _might_ get kidnapped, but his luck _could_ find him a way out of that. His luck couldn’t bring back a once-every-one-hundred-and-fifty-year supernatural natural phenomenon.

Some part of him was sad that he would have to miss it, but that part was not the loudest. “I don’t suppose you could make an, er, pitstop? Just to drop me off somewhere?”

The captain tilted her head. Her struggling smile gave up.

“ _Welp, swan diving off the side of the boat it is then._ ” Gladstone decided. “Ah, of course not! Silly me! Well, looking forward to it. I should get going if I don’t want to miss dinner before the event!” He swung his arm in a gung-ho gesture.

“Of course. Enjoy the rest of your cruise, Mister Gander.”

“Thanksss.” Gladstone exhaled as he headed for the door.

“Hey, kid?” The captain asked behind his back.

“Yes captain?” The chinstrap penguin responded.

“Remind me to _never_ do that again.”

“Yes captain.”

Gladstone grumbled as he stepped out of the bridge. He paced toward the railing of the deck. No sense in dallying. He didn’t have any personal possessions in his room anyway, as the ticket he had ‘won’ had covered everything from his food to his wardrobe. The only thing he was really going to miss was the trip’s worth supply of specialty chocolate that had come with the room.

He grabbed the railing. The wind ruffled his feathers. He took a deep farewell breath of the briny air, closed his eyes tight to avoid getting salt water in them upon impact, and began to hoist himself over the railing.

“Gotcha.”

Gladstone let out a rather undignified honk as a muscular arm wrapped around his chest. A damp handkerchief was pressed over his bill and nares, the hand behind it clamping his bill shut. He tried to hold his breath and flail against his captor, but he could tell it was too late. He had gasped involuntarily a few times before getting his panic under control, and now the ship was beginning to spin a bit around him. 

As his mind clouded over, he briefly registered through blurry vision that the deck he had been about to jump off of was _not_ the edge of the ship. It was actually part of the upper deck. If he had succeeded in jumping, he would have accidentally fell about a hundred feet onto the deck below, most likely resulting in him becoming an unrecognisable bloody mess splintering the wood. His kidnapper had just saved his life.

“ _How lucky…_ ” he thought bitterly, as the world around him went dark.

* * *

Gladstone was sore and cold when he woke up. All in all, he felt downright miserable about so many things that he almost didn’t feel miserable at all. Just tired.

He was sitting up, his back against a wall with his feet splayed out in front of him. His arms were tingly, like they had just fallen asleep. They were pressed against his back, and he finally noticed the ropes tied around him when he tried to move them.

He leaned his head back against the wall and sighed in defeat, giving up for just a short second. Once he felt like he had given up for long enough (enough time for resentment to turn into boredom) he began to look around the room he was in.

It was one of the guest rooms, that was for sure. A cheaper one than his own, clearly. The single double bed ( _pathetic_ ) was tipped over onto its side and pushed against the far wall of the room. This provided maximum space for the absolute _overkill_ that Gladstone found surrounding him.

First of all, he was sitting under a ladder. The cheap hardware store ladder that straddled him was barely tall enough for someone to crawl under, much less _walk_. It was insulting.

There was a handful of horseshoes hanging upside down off of the ladder, though Gladstone knew that despite common myths, horseshoes were lucky no matter which way you hung them. 

Broken chain letters and tipped saltshakers and open umbrellas littered the floor, but that just made Gladstone shake his head and scoff. “ _Who do you think broke those chains and spilled that salt and opened those umbrellas, you moron? It wasn’t me!_ ”

There was a mirror hanging precariously from the ceiling, as if one wrong move would break it. He _might_ have to watch out for that one. Not the bad luck, mind you. Broken glass was the real danger.

Finally, the room was sprinkled with a dusting of paper strips, each one with the number thirteen scribbled on it in red. Gladstone just rolled his eyes at that one.

But the cherry on top of the whole thing was sitting on the dresser. There was a birdcage with a single, very irritated black cat stuffed inside.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Gladstone crooned. He made a clicking sound with his beak to get the cat’s attention. “Did the mean guy capture you too?”

“Murr…” the cat groused. It licked its paw and groomed it over a slightly clipped ear.

“What do you say? Should we work together to get out of here?” he asked, more to hype himself up then actually ask the creature for help.

“Meow.” the cat agreed.

The door of the room creaked open. Gladstone could hear a muffled low voice coming from behind it. “No I- yes but- no, everything is clean- salt? That’s just the good old ocean smell. No I- Actually yes, I would like some more toilet paper. Thank you. No, I can do the bed myself. Goodbye.”

He shuffled into the room and slammed the door behind himself. “Gah, cleaning people!”

“Oh, I don’t know. They’re very nice once you get to know them. Hard work is somewhat admirable, even if it’s not for me. Just make sure you tip well, and you’ve got yourself a new personal fan to boot!” 

“Oh, you’re awake.”

“God, I wish I wasn't, to be honest. Is that a princess umbrella?”

The dog looked embarrassed. “I didn’t have a lot of time!”

“Nah, I wasn’t chastising it my good sir. I’m rather a fan of those princesses myself. That Waddle umbrella, though… woof, talk about _tacky_ -”

“Enough!” the dog barked.

“Um-hum.” Gladstone clamped his bill shut.

“I’ve got three days until my employer comes to pick us up, and I want to spend them in peace and _quiet_!”

“Three days? As in, three nights too? What are you going to sleep on?”

“Uh…” The dog lifted a finger, then lowered it. He stared at the propped-up bed like he was seeing it for the first time. He contemplated it, and then his finger shot back up. “There's no curfew on this cruise, I’ll just sleep on the poolside benches!”

“Uh-huh. And what about me?”

“You’re going to stay right there. You can sleep there, for all I care. And I’ll bring you food from the buffet, before you ask.”

“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

“Uh, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it?”

“Your funeral. Say, why is your room so crappy anyway?”

“What?”

“Well,” Gladstone cocked his head and sneered. “You tricked me onto this boat with a first-class ticket. Why are you staying in like, _seventeenth_ class?”

“It’s what my employer set up…”

“Yikes. I hope you’re getting played- er, I mean _paid_ good for this.”

The dog’s face turned dark red. He stormed over to Gladstone, though not very quickly as he had to step around the obstacle course he had made on the floor. He pressed his face in close to Gladstone’s, who winced away from his hot breath.

“You listen here, ducky. My employer is an esteemed man who promised me boatloads of cash for a _certain_ new good luck charm!” His jowls flapped as he yelled at Gladstone, spraying spit in the gander’s face. “Soon enough I’ll be sitting pretty, while you’ll be sitting in chains at his side for the rest of your life!”

“Not the first time I’ve heard a threat like that, honestly.” Gladstone tried to wipe his face with his shoulder. “You should go tell your employer my luck doesn’t work like that. You’re wasting your time, and mine! What’s your employer going to do to you when all this falls through, huh?”

The dog wagged a finger in front of Gladstone’s bill. “You can’t fool me, ducky. Now shut up, or I’ll be sending my employer a lucky duck’s foot as an early present.”

Gladstone’s eyes crossed as he looked at the finger poking against the tip of his bill. He smiled. “ _Gotcha._ ”

“Eh? What is that sound? Static? A gas leak?” The dog asked, absently looking around. He kept his finger against Gladstone’s slightly open bill, which was his fatal mistake. Gladstone hadn’t even realized he was hissing until the dog had said something. “What are you grinning at, ducky?”

“You know, every one of you crooks always seems to forget,” Gladstone mused. “I’m half goose too.”

Gladstone pulled his head back, opened his beak up wide, and bit down on the dog’s finger.

A bite from a duckbill _is_ painful. They have rather impressive jaw strength, and blunt teeth that can give one’s skin a nasty pinch, sometimes enough to draw blood. But a bite from a _goose_ , now that’s a whole different matter. Geese have rows of pointed teeth that run along the inside of their beaks, as Gladstone’s unfortunate captor was discovering in a rather hands-on way.

“Why the _hell_ are your teeth so sharp?!” he screamed, his voice high with pain. He tried to yank his hand back, but Gladstone kept his grip. He had managed to snag not just the dog’s finger, but the knuckles of his other fingers as well.

“Goosh!” he replied, his response slightly muffled.

“Do you have teeth on your _freaking_ tongue!?” the dog screeched, making his second educational discovery of the day.

“Yesh.”

The dog jerked his fist, pulling Gladstone’s head with it. “Let go! Let go! _Let go!_ ” The last plea was so high-pitched Gladstone could barely understand it. He could see the dog preparing to pull his hand again. 

“ _One...two...now!_ ” Gladstone counted in his head. He let go just as the dog went to yank back. The dog lost his balance as a result. He stepped back onto a saltshaker as Gladstone spat blood onto the carpet. He wobbled back and forth on the rolling shaker for a few seconds, his arms grasping for something to stop his fall. He ended up grabbing the precariously hung mirror. The ropes holding it slipped off, and it came crashing down on his head, shattering into a million pieces. 

One of those pieces fell towards Gladstone. He flinched away, but the shard missed him by an inch, cutting through the ropes that bound him instead.

The dog continued to fall back, still not having found anything to stop him. His head fell against the birdcage, knocking the door open.

Gladstone watched and winced as the cat attacked the dog in a tornado of claws, running around his body as a dark blur. The dog stumbled towards the door, yanking it open while trying to kick the cat off of himself. He hopped across the wood, yelling as his suit developed more and more tears.

Gladstone wandered out after him. “Watch out for the-”

The dog flopped against - and then over - the railing. There was a splash, and then Gladstone didn’t see him anymore.

“Oh, how unlucky.” Gladstone shook his head.

…

Less than a day later, a dog would wash up on shore at a beach near a city. He would go into town - tattered clothing, wounded hand, and all - and beg the first greasy spoon he saw for a job. He would live the rest of his life doing that job, and he would be okay at it, and that would be that. If you asked people about him, they would say he was a decent guy, but he always seemed to get really weird around geese - whether they were sentient customers, or just dumb birds at the park.

…

Gladstone continued to glance lazily over the railing, just checking to see if the dog would show back up. He never did.

“ _Hope he’s not dead. Even if he did try to sell me._ ” he thought. Then he shrugged.

A twenty-dollar bill fluttered down and slapped him in the face.

“Hey, twenty dollars.” he sighed. A moment later another fluttered down and joined the first in his hand, and then _another_ . “Oh, _eighty_ dollars?”

A faint whistling caught his attention. He turned to see an older looking macaroni penguin pushing a housekeeping cart up the deck.

“Excuse me, sir?” Gladstone waved from the railing.

“How can I help you?” the penguin asked.

“A friend of mine made a real mess of his room. It _really_ needs to be tidied. He told me to give you this, to tip you for it.” Gladstone handed over the eighty dollars.

“Oh my, this is… I’ll get right on it.”

“Honestly, it might not be enough. Let me know if you think you deserve more compensation for having to deal with… _that_.” Gladstone pointed into the room he had just been held captive in less than thirty minutes ago.

The penguin peaked into the room. He came back out and waved his hand dismissively at Gladstone. “Pish, that’s only like the _fourth_ worst room I’ve ever had to clean.” He brandished his vacuum cleaner like it was a lethal weapon. “It’ll be spotless in no time.”

* * *

Gladstone leaned over the railing as the hot red light of the Auroras Iceberg shone over him. Folks around him oohed and awed. He just smiled. He was glad he hadn’t missed it after all.

A green bolt of light struck through the ice. The crowd hummed again.

“Did you see that, Mr. Midnight?” A little duck in a yellow dress asked her cat. The cat purred as it settled into her arms. “I’m so happy you made it back in time to see the lights.”

“Thank you.” Gladstone mouthed at the cat. He swore that the cat winked back.

There was the slight roar of engines as a large red plane soared by the iceberg, pulling up at the last second just in time to avoid crashing into one of the earth's greatest wonders. Some of the cruise passengers gasped. 

Gladstone waved at the plane, wondering if his family could see him. They probably couldn’t. He _was_ rather far away, and he was pretty sure his suit blended into the green light. 

The boat swayed gently. Gladstone decided that he was going to swear off cruises for a while.

“Come on up and spin the aurora wheel!” Someone behind him announced through a bullhorn. “Land on green to win a free stay in our luxury cabin resort in the mountains! Your first try is free, and bonus spins are only five dollars!”

Mountains, huh? Now that was some solid ground that he could get behind.

He turned around. The wheel was divided into sixteen segments. Fourteen red, two green. He could already tell that the wheel was rigged with weights.

Gladstone rolled up his sleeves. It was time to do what he did best.

**Author's Note:**

> Would you believe this whole thing started just based on the idea that Gladstone is half goose? I've seen a few posts about it floating around, and a lot of people draw him with sharp teeth. I was just kinda thinking about how he might be able to use those horrifying goose teeth to his advantage against say, a captor, and this came out, and it honestly barely even focuses on that. It was surprisingly fun to try and figure out how to even _get_ Gladstone into this situation despite his luck. I hope we get more character development from 2017 Gladstone soon, I'm really looking forward to it. It seems like the writers are hoping to play the long game, so fingers crossed. Thank you for reading.


End file.
